Photograph: © Akio Kawasumi In Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, Marco Polo tells an aging Kublai Khan about the many fantastic places he claims to have visited. One is the metropolis of Thekla, a massive collection of “cranes pulling up other cranes, scaffoldings that embrace other scaffoldings, beams that prop up other beams.” When asked why Thekla’s construction is taking so long, the inhabitants respond, “So that its destruction cannot begin.” Polo might well have been describing the capital of Japan, which Calvino visited in 1976, instead of an imaginary city. Tokyo is a city of a thousand building sites, a vast patchwork of plots on which structures are built, used for a few decades, and then razed. It’s an endless cycle of construction and destruction fueled by social mores, regulations and taxes, although a small but growing segment of Japanese architects are trying to challenge the existing framework. This story is from Kinfolk Issue Thirty-Two Buy Now Related Stories Arts & Culture Design Kunio Maekawa A new exhibition at Kinfolk’s Case Study Room in Tokyo. Arts & Culture Issue 48 Cult Rooms After “completing” philosophy, Ludwig Wittgenstein tried—and failed—at architecture. Arts & Culture Issue 47 Draw the Line A short history of linear architecture. Arts & Culture Issue 47 Peer Review Hadani Ditmars on the disappearing legacy of Rifat Chadirji, Iraq’s most influential architect. Arts & Culture Issue 47 CULT ROOMS In north Lebanon, two architects are rebuilding a corner of Oscar Niemeyer’s international fair. Arts & Culture Issue 43 Stone Cold A history of spite architecture.
Arts & Culture Issue 48 Cult Rooms After “completing” philosophy, Ludwig Wittgenstein tried—and failed—at architecture.
Arts & Culture Issue 47 Peer Review Hadani Ditmars on the disappearing legacy of Rifat Chadirji, Iraq’s most influential architect.
Arts & Culture Issue 47 CULT ROOMS In north Lebanon, two architects are rebuilding a corner of Oscar Niemeyer’s international fair.
